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Students’ mock vote gives NDP a squeak win

By Kristin RushowyEducation Reporter

Thu., Oct. 6, 2011

Ontario students voted in the New Democrats as the next provincial government — but only just.

In mock elections held Tuesday and Wednesday in 2,200 schools across the province — covering all 107 electoral districts — students from Grades 4 to 12 gave the NDP 26.63 per cent of the vote and 41 seats, according to early results.

The Liberals were close behind, with 25.78 per cent of the vote and 39 seats.

The Progressive Conservative party took 24 seats, and the Green party three.

“The results traditionally have predicted the winner of the real election, but this is quite different from what we were hearing in the polls, that the race was really close between the Conservatives and the Liberals,” said Taylor Gunn, who founded the non-profit Student Vote, which helps teachers to run federal, provincial and municipal elections, as well as provide materials for class lessons.

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Students voted in class, using realistic ballots, for the actual candidates in their ridings and their teachers submitted the results to Student Vote.

By Thursday night, about 100 schools had yet to report. Final results will be released next week.

More than 320,000 students took part in this provincial vote, said Gunn.

Yun Cheng at Toronto’s Secord Elementary School, near Main St. and Danforth Ave., said five Grade 4 and 5 classes there took part, with Grade 5 teachers like herself incorporating the election into the government unit of the social studies curriculum.

Secord students visited the Beaches—East York candidates’ offices to pick up pamphlets and buttons, and also created comics to help promote the party of their choice and outline platforms, “with the purpose to get other people reading the comic, and to vote for their party,” said Cheng.

Students also made their own identification cards — and if they forgot them on election day, they didn’t vote. (“Yes, we had some,” Cheng said.)

Some students took on jobs such as poll clerk or deputy returning officer.

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“For sure they were really gung-ho about this, especially when they had to present to the Grade 4s” to try to convince the younger students who to vote for. “There was a lot of in-house fighting for their own candidates going on. They got really into it.

“We also had a discussion about voting and whether their parents were going to vote, and a bunch said they convinced their parents to vote — which if you think about it is part of the point of this.”

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